Courtly love in Potterverse WAS: What triggered ancient magic?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 187149

Alla:
> Sorry,  I do not even see where you are coming from with the idea (if that's your idea)  that Uncle Algie and Snape are anywhere close to each other on the scale of putting babies' life in danger.

Pippin:

Neville wouldn't have been any less dead if he'd been killed for not being magical than if he'd been killed for being the prophecy boy. And this was Algie's second attempt. The first time Neville nearly drowned (a form of torture, according to some) but did anyone think Algie might be going a bit too far? Apparently not. 

I am trying to show that you can love and still be part of a culture that doesn't put the same value on every child's life. I don't have the reference, but I believe there's a letter extant from an ancient Roman traveler to his pregnant wife, where he writes touchingly about his love for her, and his hopes for their child. And then he says, in his final line, that if it's a girl, she should drown it.

There are and have been cultures where an unwanted child has no more value than an unwanted kitten, but the people who believe this are not psychopaths who are incapable of love. 

Salazar Slytherin had a child of his own, and left a basilisk so that child's descendants could hound other children out of Hogwarts on pain of death. Voldemort didn't have to teach his disciples that some lives were worth less than others. It was  engrained in their culture already.

Pippin